Skills as the new currency?

Skills: The New Currency of Work?

"Skills are the new currency" has been a popular phrase since at least 2012. That's at least as long as I've been using it. As skills technology evolves, we're now closer than ever to making this metaphor a reality. But is it the right approach?

The Problem with Standardization

Many vendors and employers are attempting to create their own unified skills currency, normalizing skills to their own standards. However, as the saying goes, "The thing I love about standards is there are so many to choose from."

This standardization effort may be a bit of a fools errand. Consider fiat currencies like the US Dollar, Euro, or Yen. They don't create a common price for goods across different markets. The price of bread or gasoline varies significantly even within the same country. Standardizing skills might be equally futile.

Yes organizations may want to have a reference model for their skills economy, that can be traded in the marketplace of skills using other exchange mechanisms that authenticate the transactions and commodity of the currency, the skill units.

The Personal Fiat Currency of Skills

What if we viewed each person as their own fiat currency of skills? My context and application of common skills differ from others, even if we claim the same skill set. The workforce marketplace, both at the macro (employer) and micro levels, should focus on trading capabilities or the products of skills—the natural language description of what we can do, have done, and have the potential to do.

This approach values the diversity of skill currencies. Building a website in the US or the UK delivers the same outcome using similar skill sets, but the currencies (dollars or pounds) differ. The solution lies in creating a well-ordered marketplace for skills, akin to the FOREX market for traditional currencies.

Beyond Skill Nouns: The Power of Context

Focusing solely on skill nouns is like using Boolean operators in your first web search in 1998—outdated and limiting. The real power lies in intentionally designing a market that recognizes the relationships between adjacent and proxy skills, and their application in context.

With today's technology and the volume of data available in the marketplace, we have an incredible opportunity—and responsibility—to understand, cleanse, curate, and sift through the noise created by various players in the skills market.

The True Endgame: An Open Exchange of Capability

The ultimate goal isn't to create another cyber coin exchange. It's to establish an open, accessible, and well-ordered exchange of capability for contribution. We should aim for a world where everyone can easily enter, engage with, or exit the workforce, understanding and managing their diversified skills portfolio, their economy of 1.

Imagine having your skills portfolio in your pocket, choosing which elements to share, like your aspirations or personal development goals. This puts your data in your control, not behind an employer's siloed firewall with currency export restrictions.

A Call, maybe more a plea for an Open, Portable Skills Portfolio

In this evolving skills economy, an open, portable portfolio democratizes skills, empowering individuals to understand, invest in, and manage their skill sets for their own benefit outside of the closed HR siloed data of one employer or another, that benefits the global workforce.

In the drive for better data and skills intelligence, it respects the harmonization of the economies we represent, not normalization or standardization.

The future of work isn't about standardizing a single skills currency—it's about recognizing and leveraging the diverse currencies of human capability.

#SkillsThatWork #Skills Skill Collective